women's intimate awareness of time

In her book Hags, an analysis of the social and political status of middle-aged women, Victoria Smith touches on the fact that a woman’s life is one of hiatuses, stops and starts, changes and fluctuations.

She makes this point in relation to how this affects career projection, pension pots, and our relation to ageing.

In a chapter covering pension disparities, she also perfectly articulated something that has recently been at the forefront of my mind – how having a period amplifies the passing of time. Those who have periods contend with and are confronted with monthly reminders of/and a biological clock that routinely ticks off months lived.

We are rewarded for counting days and checking them off, something useful, but resulting in constantly occupying a future rather than the time we are in, timekeeping and calendaring to not be caught out. This chops up our lives. It doesn’t allow continuation or constants. It reduces months and seasons into phases: menstruation, the follicular phase, ovulation and the luteal phase. Instead of allowing time to flow freely through me, it is sectioned up into weeks and counted days that indicate when to start certain medications, when to stock up on things, when to expect certain feelings, and when to feel the self I was for the past week change.

As you become used to being a woman, you begin to know your period and know yourself.

I’m trying to see this as something useful, and even an almost poetic, ‘feminine’, beautiful thing; of seeing change and allowing it to happen. I know reasons for changes in myself, and don’t punish myself for them. I allow hormones to pass knowing things are not permanent. I am released from setting goals for clear skin, because, I’ve learnt, this doesn’t exist.

I have comfortingly thought to myself how nice it is now to know my body, to not feel as if it is betraying me in its fluctuations – something I used to get frustrated at; not understanding why I look or feel so different to last week, or even yesterday.

I have tried to accept these fluctuations with kindness and empathy in an exercise of self-love, rather than requiring or expecting my body to remain fixed or doll-like. The changes are, after all human, and deeply feminine. 

It is healing to not force my body to be, look and feel a certain way all the time. It removes guilt and self-punishment. I know why I am tired. I know nothing in my life needs to change because I feel sad. I haven’t done something wrong to mean my skin isn’t glowing like it did last week. I’m not lazy. I am eating more not because I have no discipline or willpower. I know that I have not put on weight overnight. If I feel like I want to stay in bed instead of going out I need rest, my friendships aren’t unfulfilling. I don’t need to change myself or my life.

Women are made acutely aware of time passing through advertising, societal narrative, and social pressures, but also because we are betrayed by our own bodies. We are reminded constantly of the one thing each human fears; the passing of time. We contend with a biological clock and monthly reminders of the completion of another cycle of the moon.

I count days and weeks methodically – almost obsessively. Apps help women track moods, sleep cycles, and eating habits to better plan, predict, and prepare. I make sure I have my prescription of Sertraline for days 15-28 so I don’t fall into a black hole of undone laundry, being unable to cook, and not getting out of bed.

Before Sertreline though, as much as it has changed my life, that phase was still something to anticipate, dread, and count towards. Eventually, after a pattern was realised, I lived even my happy, normal weeks, knowing that it would soon descend into something dark and unenjoyable. I would feel happy and know it wouldn’t last, feel myself and know that in 10 days it would be ripped away from me and I wouldn’t even have the inclination to listen to music. It created desperation in the moments of happiness, and frustration when it was ripped away.

This constantly meant time was not my own. I was just waiting to feel a certain way that would undeniably come, ridiculously energised and lustful for life, or completely numb, flat, and uninterested like clockwork.

This created a strange relationship with my own identity – who was I, if who I was changed dramatically every 10 days? How do I look if hormonal water retention means my face and figure genuinely change? Am I a confident, sociable person, if I’m not for half the month?

The passing of time is less fluid, it is either building up or cooling down from something. Something is always coming up that I need to be prepared for.

A woman's relationship to a month, a week and time itself, is different to a man.

Time, sadly, has echos of routine, slips away more quickly, and taunts with milestones of its passing.